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To: Dennis Roth who wrote (82988)	4/14/2007 4:25:28 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 206209

This soil depletion is occurring at an even faster rate in Brazil on sugar cane plantations. With each crop cycle the need for fertilizers grows, and improvements in crop yields achieved with each pound of fertilizer declines. .

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (82988)	4/14/2007 5:10:01 PM
From: upanddown	Read Replies (10) \| Respond to of 206209

Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America Dennis...A very long report but very compelling and extremely well documented. It sounds like biofuels is just another fake "solution". So how many peaks have we uncovered here recently? I've got peak oil, peak gas, peak coal, peak bee and now peak soil. Any others? John

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (82988)	4/15/2007 10:36:33 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 206209

Advanced Energy Initiative By President George W. BushThe President's Letter and The President's Energy Vision energyinnovator.com

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (82988)	4/15/2007 3:09:57 PM
From: ChanceIs	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 206209

>>>Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America<<< Quote of the Article #1: "…Massive alcohol production from our farms is an immoral use of our soils since it rapidly promotes their wasting away. We must save these soils for an oil-less future" (Jackson 1980)." Quote of the article #2: "Fertilizer energy" is 28% of the energy used in agriculture (Heller, 2000). Fertilizer uses natural gas both as a feedstock and the source of energy to create the high temperatures and pressures necessary .... possible for the world’s population to grow from half a billion to 6.5 billion today.......become dependent on unstable foreign states......................Between 1995 and 2005 we increased our fertilizer imports by more than 148% for Anhydrous Ammonia, 93% for Urea (solid), and 349% of other nitrogen fertilizers (USDA ERS)." So there it is. I think that this article may have been biased, but it does seem very well documented. Frequent Pimentel quotes. Pimentel was hired by Jimmy Carter into the Dept of Energy in about '78 to save his presidency from Iran. He was to develop ethanol from corn. He would have loved to please his boss, but he said it couldn't be done. He is at Cornell - Ithaca, New York - surely a location with no stake in the corn business. Certainly one should be long natural gas. I have often stated my suspicion that ethanol will be a great short. Its a question of when. I want to study the science upside and down, but from what I have always suspected, the energy balance isn't there - at least for corn. It has ALWAYS been an economic loser - wasting precious capital/labor hours. The case for "Peak Soil" has me most interested. The "When" issue will be decided on politics. Several lobbying groups have begun to coalesce against it. It is one to watch. Too many people on the face of the planet??? I think so. Its pretty scary. Is the US doing itself in??? One wonders. Really wonders. I am beginning to think that Jim "Toilet Mouth" Kunstler is morphing from a lunatic into an Oracle of Delphi. The case for concentrating one's assets in Canadian natural gas, and the sand box grows stronger every day.

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (82988)	4/19/2007 4:06:53 AM
From: Snowshoe	Respond to of 206209

>>Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America<< Theoretically we could build a sustainable biofuel production system by using perennial plants such as native tallgrass prairie, which includes legumes that host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The leftovers from processing the cellulose could be converted to animal feed, with the manure being spread on the land. But if we spend 25 years methodically optimizing the entire process, using farming and transport equipment that runs on ethanol-powered fuel cells, the best we can probably achieve is an EROEI in the range of 2 to 6. That's better than the current corn-ethanol EROEI of around 1, but still not very good because we don;t have enough available land to scale it up. If fossil fuels are growing scarce, it makes more sense to get energy from nuclear/solar/wind/tidal/geothermal, and use the land to grow chemical feedstocks. BTW, much of our current agriculture is unsustainable, even if the crop residues are left on the land. As Wendell Berry put it: "Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems."